


Fragments of Escaflowne

by Devussie



Category: Tenkuu no Escaflowne | The Vision of Escaflowne
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devussie/pseuds/Devussie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short, speculative drabbles about Escaflowne that explore various characters, situations, and relationships. Both pre- and post-series, as well as some "gap-fillers". For now, all pieces are in rough chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Folken Strategos

**Author's Note:**

> This Folken-centric piece takes place somewhere during the series between the burning of Fanelia and Van's capture. He's a mysterious and enigmatic figure, and I can't resist trying to figure out what he's thinking.

It had rained for three days, a rarity in the desert wasteland of the Zaibach Empire. 

Folken Strategos went for a walk. 

This was its own rare occurrence among the Sorcerers; most preferred to stay deep within the bowels of the palace, going near-sighted and pale from peering through their various scopes in the darkness. This didn't mean, however, that the cloak of the Sorcerer went unrecognized among the citizens. Though the streets were crowded, they parted around him like an unclean flood, avoiding eye contact. 

That was just as well; he didn't go out in public to endear himself to the masses, though if the public knew the experiments the other Sorcerers were performing, they might well consider him their least repulsive option. Might.

Folken's brow creased slightly as he considered the muffled sobbing he'd heard from behind those walls, how some part of him still felt pulled to respond. He'd reminded himself that Folken of Fanelia was dead, that to question the pursuit of science was tantamount to blasphemy here, and he avoided those halls ever after whenever possible. 

His cloak trailed after him in the wet filth of the streets but he paid no attention. His shoulder ached; though the flesh had long since closed around the metal screwed into his very bones, the rain and chill crept in and caused discomfort. This, too, he ignored. 

Steadily he paced through the city until the buildings became sparse, until he could see the desert plain open up before him, dotted with struggling farms and stunted livestock. Far, far away, he could see the mountain range through the haze of mist. 

He thought about lush, cool forests and steep, rocky mountainsides, a city of wood and stone and people who did not turn from his face in the streets. He thought of those who had known Folken Fanel all his life, those who would not recognize Folken Strategos of Zaibach, and of how those people had burned with their country. 

He missed half a step. Underneath his cloak, he clenched a fist he could not feel. 

Folken recited formulas in his head, listed all the steps of the scientific method, and concentrated on his mental notes about the new sleeping poison he was developing. He filled his mind with cold logic and facts until there was no room for anything else. 

He did not stumble again.


	2. Hitomi Kanzaki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Hitomi, Van, and Allen escape from Zaibach on Escaflowne, the series skips ahead _three weeks_ that we never get to see. I wanted to write something to fill in that blank, but this little snippet of Hitomi reflecting on her and Van's mind-meld from the previous episode is all that I have.

Hitomi kept her eyes on the path outside of Asturia, grateful that the surface was smooth so that she didn't have to pay much attention to where she was going. Her mind raced, memories and emotions and confusion flitting through her mind. _Van's hand pressed against her own…_

But it was more than that, it was also the trust he'd shown as he reached for her, belief that she would help… and as a side effect, the light brush of his mind against her own, the flicker of something there beneath the pain that she almost was able to recognize… 

_Am I really this fickle?_ She sighed and bit her lip, trying to think of something to distract her. 

In the eastern sky, the moons hung. She squinted at the Mystic Moon, wondering how such a familiar place could look so strange from outside of it. She tried to make out Japan, but it was too far and too cloudy. She imagined that on the other side of those clouds, her family and Yukari and Amano were looking up, wondering where she'd gone and missing her like she missed them. 

Amano… Amano the track captain, the star, who went out of his way to mentor her, who smiled when they passed each other at school. She remembered how his long hair framed his face, how his bravado mixed with his kindness. _…Will I ever have the chance again for Amano to give me my very first kiss?_

If she concentrated, she could almost feel it. It would be just like the way Allen's lips had touched her cheek… She blushed at the thought of it. 

Without a sound, a dark, lithe form dropped from the tree above her and stood in her path. 

Hitomi gasped, tried to shriek, and flailed wildly backwards, ending up falling awkwardly onto her rump in the dirt. 

Merle rolled her eyes, then crossed her arms and lashed her tail, her gaze stony. Hitomi, standing and brushing herself off, thought she'd seen a similar look on Earth from pet cats who were about to pounce. 

"Me-Merle! You almost gave me a heart attack!" 

"Heart attack?" Merle looked curious for an instant, then snorted. "Whatever, I don't even care." 

She glared at Hitomi. "What I do care about is… that you didn't listen to me." 

"I..I didn't… what? What are you talking about?" She furrowed her brow, frowning at the cat-girl. 

Merle rolled her eyes again. "I'm not stupid, you know, or blind. I've watched you with Lord Van. What are you even doing?" 

Hitomi felt her face beginning to flush, but she wasn't sure why. Merle always knew how to make her flustered, like she was doing something wrong. 

Merle continued before she could come up with a response. "Tell me this, Hitomi. Are you going back to the Mystic Moon or not?" 

"Of course I am, Merle!" Hitomi spluttered. "Earth is my _home!_ It's where I _belong!_ " 

Merle's expression changed, but she didn't relax. She took a few steps back before almost whispering, "Yeah, I thought so. You really should've listened to me." 

Without hesitation, she crouched, sprang straight up into the tree she'd dropped from, and was gone. 

"What's that supposed to mean, Merle?" Hitomi grumbled. But suddenly, she thought she knew. 

_Stay away from Lord Van. I don't want a foreigner like you getting too close to him._


	3. Folken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place near the end of the series, right before Folken and Hitomi go to confront Dornkirk.

He didn't sleep much these days. 

It wasn't so much that he didn't want to sleep, but trying to sleep sometimes left him lying too long with only his own mind before blissful oblivion came. He tried to avoid that. 

More often than not, during the night he found himself in his deep makeshift laboratory. His mind was noise these days, and the precision and ritual of experimentation always seemed to soothe him. He supposed he had no one but Zaibach to thank for that, as he almost certainly wouldn't have discovered his genuine interest in science in Fanelia. 

And if he had never left Fanelia… The fingers of his good hand tightened around a delicate glass beaker. He closed his eyes, waited a beat, then added a few drops of solution with a pipette. The mixture flushed blue, and he allowed himself a small smile. He hadn't become a Sorcerer because he had no aptitude, after all. 

Not that he wore their mantle now. Almost unconsciously, he slightly adjusted the linen cowl that hid his bad arm. He'd seen the way their eyes flicked nervously across it. Over time he'd gotten used to its elegant ugliness, he knew people were afraid what they didn't understand, and they couldn't understand _him_. He didn't need their fear or their respect, though; he only needed them to listen. Passing on his knowledge of Zaibach was the only way to save Van. 

Then again, perhaps it wasn't. He'd seen the girl's power and the love she hadn't yet acknowledged. If he were an idealist, he'd say that was enough to save the whole world. He wasn't, though, so yes, when the time was right, she would certainly need his help. 

All he had to do was wait. 

It wasn't long before a scuff on the stairs alerted him. 

"I knew you'd come." 

He felt the small but genuine smile spread across his face of its own accord. He understood, then. It wasn't science or the art of manipulating an Emperor that would save Van after all, it was here, it was her. Her power radiated from her, her every line trembled with anxious love. 

"You'll die if you go." Her voice was full of certainty, but he could sense her longing to be wrong, her wish not to know the things that she had seen. 

How could he explain? He'd abandoned the only place in the world where he belonged, but better that than to stay there as Strategos. All he had done since then meant nothing. He was guilty without hope of atonement; he could never be more than a man who had destroyed his own country. He owed a debt and even giving up his own life was too small of a payment for what he'd done. 

The best he could do was die to give Fanelia a chance for a future with King Van. And this girl… he had a feeling that somehow she'd take care of the rest. 

\-- 

The pillar of light burned her eyes after the darkness of Folken's laboratory, but she looked up at him anyway. She wasn't afraid, not of him, not even now, heading into the heart of the Emperor's lair. His expression had changed already, had become hardness and determination, and easily she saw Van in that barely-controlled ferocity. Folken was going to die and they both knew it, but in his mind, he was ready to do anything to save his brother. Hitomi knew that by Fanelian custom, Folken had failed the rite of dragon-slaying, but in that moment he looked like royalty. 

"You would have been a good king," she whispered, but it was lost in the roar (how could light be so _loud?_ ) then there was only the hum of machines: they were there, all was green light and Dornkirk's madness, and there was no time anymore, no time.


	4. Fanelia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The war ends, and King Van goes home to rebuild.

The white dragon flew overhead, and the people of Fanelia understood that it was time to go home. 

They trickled back into the Valley of Dragons alone and in groups, some large and some small. Though they wondered what they'd find among the seared bones of their country, mentally they had already prepared themselves to find nothing. 

Instead, their King was waiting. There were no more dragons in Fanelia. 

Though some muttered to themselves and threw rotting fruit at his back from places they could not be seen, most welcomed him back with what gifts they could spare, even if it was nothing more than a kind word. He didn't waver, regarding them all with gentle eyes, and few were left unmoved by the deep, sad wisdom within them. Lord Van accepted them all, accepted their criticisms and their curses, and in time, he heard them less and less. 

He worked tirelessly alongside them. There was no task too menial for his royal hands, and he threw himself into even the most thankless of jobs. He sweated alongside the men and shared meals with everyone. He bandaged the scraped knees of children and washed laundry alongside their mothers. 

The people were relieved to find that he was just as approachable as a king as he had been as a prince, and hesitantly at first, they began to trust in him. He listened gravely to every concern and in return, they slowly forgave him for the months of his absence. 

Eventually the instances of thrown fruit slowed, then stopped altogether. 

He poured himself out in the rebuilding of Fanelia as though he were an overflowing cup, as though he existed in excess and must give most of it away every day or he would drown. The people, hearts parched from months of fear and trauma, soaked up his attention and his love and slowly began to remember what it meant to be Fanelian. Since he gave so much to them, they were willing to allow him his moments of distraction, his distant gaze as though looking into some other place. 

"The war changed everyone," they said, when they thought he wasn't listening. 

His habit of slipping away after the evening meal became well-known, but they let it pass without comment. Where he went, they didn't know, but he always came back, and what were mere nights of absence compared to the months of uncertainty during the Fortune War? 

… 

Van lay on a rooftop, one of the few still mostly intact and with a fine view of the western sky. The sun set in a gloria of gold and red and he watched while hardly blinking. A soft sound clattered behind him. 

"Merle." 

"Lord Van…" The cat girl sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. "Don't you ever get tired of looking at the sky? You're here every night." 

"The sunset is different every day. I like to watch it." 

"It's not really the sun that you're here for, is it, Lord Van?" 

He didn't say anything, but she hadn't expected to hear the answer that she knew already: the clouds shifted, the light faded, and the moons began to rise. 

 

\---

There were whispers that began to follow him wherever he went. Whenever he happened to hear them, he always stopped and turned to the whisperers with a frown, brow furrowed. Invariably, they fell silent and hurried away, somewhat chastened and confused. His eyes always followed them for a moment, but the furrow in his brow didn't relax even after he turned away again and resumed his course. 

Later, alone, he lay on his bed in the newly reconstructed palace and looked out of the rebuilt east-facing windows. It was night and the moons' light illuminated the stone floor. 

"They call me a war hero," he murmured. "…but there weren't any heroes in that war. Only a lot of people who died." He paused and his eyes lowered. "Some of them because of me." 

He stood and walked over to the window, one hand lightly brushing the hilt of the royal sword that stood in its rack as he walked by. Customarily, the Fanelian king always wore a blade, more for symbolic than practical reasons even in times of war. Van diligently carried this one as well, but he bore it like a scar. 

"…I thought I had to protect you. I owed you a debt, and I had to keep you safe even if it meant paying it with my own life. Especially if it meant that." He sighed. "…you managed to save me without hurting anyone, but I… I had too many dragons in my heart. You always understood that much better than I did." 

He turned his gaze from the sky and regarded the royal sword. His shoulders slumped as he wondered if he could ever do enough good to balance the karma of war. He doubted it; lives were much more easily lost than saved. Saving them took real courage, and for a while he'd found anger and fear to be much less difficult. 

These days, though he was far from the effortless cheerfulness of his childhood, he was calm and gentle, and of all his people, only his closest friends knew what his true role in the war had been. Only they knew what he had lost and gained, and they weren't the ones whispering in the streets.

He pressed his arms tightly against his chest and bowed his head. "Hitomi..." He breathed the word out like a prayer, like an entreaty. 

The moons' light fell against his skin like a caress. It was only cool light and he could not feel it, but he stood for a long time with his arms wrapped around himself, imagining that he could.


	5. Hitomi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's true what they say, that you can never really go home again.

Hitomi was rising and then falling, but somehow the change in direction was so subtle she almost didn't notice. 

The light faded, the roar replaced by the stillness of an evening on Earth. She looked around at her school, blinking eyes still wet with tears. The city lights twinkled outside of the stadium and the wind stirred with a nearly-summer breeze. A wash of familiarity swept over her, the way she imagined someone going back to their old childhood home must feel. She reached for her neckline out of habit, clasped her fingers around nothing in particular. 

She took her first step, and then another, down streets she'd walked a thousand times. She swiped her train ticket and took a seat in the station to wait, marveling at how completely indifferently the crowd flowed around her. 

_I've been on another planet!_ she silently said. _I've been in the midst of a war! I saw dragons and guymelefs, beastpeople, and… angels…_

On the train around her, commuters sat with their heads lowered, dozing. Someone read a newspaper. They smoothly sped through the city, exactly the same as always. 

-

The next day at school, Hitomi failed an exam that she'd forgotten she had.

Later, she blinked as her professor began to lecture on the theory of gravity. Her pen had paused several minutes earlier as she gazed outside, eyes unfocused, but now her attention was drawn back inside as the teacher picked up an apple. She watched intently as he casually tossed the fruit upwards. 

It rose into the air as an apple. 

_Thwack!_

It fell with a solid slap into his palm. 

She blinked, exhaled the breath she'd been holding, and refocused her attention on her notes. 

_Sir Isaac Newton:  
-described gravity as the mutual attraction between any two bodies in the universe.   
-developed an equation describing an instantaneous effect that any two objects, no matter how far apart or how small, exert on each other._

-

"Hitomi…? Uh, hello?" Yukari waved her hand in front of her best friend's face impatiently. 

Hitomi started, looked at the other girl for a second and then smiled sheepishly, one hand going automatically to the back of her head. 

"Ah, I'm sorry, Yukari! What is it?" 

Yukari looked at her a moment, a weird, half-concerned smile on her face. "It's just…" She looked to the side for a second, swapping her expression for a wide, predatory grin. "You've hardly looked at Amano at all today! Are you sick or something?" 

Hitomi blinked twice, surprised. This was not the Yukari that she'd clutched desperately on that day, apologizing, not knowing if she'd ever come back, but she, Hitomi, _was_ the girl who realized that her best friend was in love with her crush that day. 

She flushed, thinking of her own blindness, but her friend took that as a different sign. 

"Ah-HA! Guess you aren't so sick after all." Yukari said smugly, crossing her arms. 

"H-Ha, I guess not." 

"Well, anyway, if you can stop daydreaming long enough, Coach says that you can try your practice run again today after school if you want, since you fainted yesterday." Her expressive face took on a look of genuine worry. "Are you really okay, Hitomi? You've never done that before." 

Hitomi bit her lip briefly, thinking of all that has happened since "yesterday", all the experience compressed into the space of a single unconscious dream. "Yeah, I'm… okay. I'm ready to do my run." 

After school, with Yukari and Amano looking on, she ran. Chest heaving, heels flying high, she ran. No vision coalesced, no light blinded her, no swordsmen stood in her way. She finished with a perfectly average time, put her hands on her knees. Breathed. 

Later, on their way home, Yukari stopped and turned to her, expression suddenly fierce. 

"You haven't been yourself lately, Hitomi. If this is about Amano leaving, I…" Her eyes flickered in a way that Hitomi thought she might not have noticed yesterday… months ago. Before. "I… still think you should tell him how you feel." 

Hitomi smiled, but… 

Yukari knew her the way only best friends can know one another, but Hitomi's face was alien in that moment, full of nuances that were distant and unreadable and somehow _old_.

"Yukari… I… I'm sorry I didn't see it before. You're my best friend! You really love Amano, don't you?" 

The red-haired girl's mouth dropped open. "Hitomi… it's… you… I didn't mean…" She stopped herself with an acquiescent smile. Whatever has happened to her friend, she can't argue with her in this moment, not with her eyes so full of understanding and compassion and… sadness? 

"Yes, Hitomi… I do." 

They talked for a long time on that walk home, parting with a hug and a smile. 

Hitomi continued on the last leg of her way alone, feeling like a stranger in her own life.


End file.
